So it was the MIT grads who set ES margin at $36,000 and CL at $8,000 . Idiots Well 200k isn't that much these days. I make that as a programmer and i don't even work in Finance. Pay peanuts get monkeys.
Curious as to the source of that information, the salaries, graduating schools, and the fact that they're "quants"? I'm not an MIT grad but do employ some and do know a lot of folks from a somewhat better tech school An average salary of $200K with that background in that field actually sounds pretty far below market to me. If it was starting salaries, maybe, but a. I hope (but wouldn't be surprised) it's not recent grads staffing that division, and b. A good finance quant with 10 years experience (assuming 10 years is a reasonable median) makes a whole lot more than that pretty much anywhere. Regardless of all that, their front line staff are almost universally morons who have to be the bottom of the barrel. I can't image you could disagree with that if you ever had to have a meaningful conversation with them?
I don't know where you work. But the salaries seem in line with what alot of Capital Markets risk positions pay. It's not as pay for performance as Sales or Investment Banking. How much you pay your programmers?
They're making about that much, and we're in the super boring utility space. Could be that we've got different definitions of a "quant", I'm thinking folks with technical degrees from the best tech schools doing serious programming and analysis. A capital markets risk position to me is more a Brown International Relations grad jockeying Excel spreadsheets, which I agree is lower on the totem pole. I am still curious as to the source that says IB either pays that salary or pays it to a room full of MIT quants. Although not the most bulletproof source, LinkedIn tells me there's only 3 MIT grads in all of Interactive Brokers (https://www.linkedin.com/search/res...]&facetSchool=["18494"]&origin=FACETED_SEARCH) One of those is a "financial advisor" and the other two look to be pretty junior having only worked there 1 and 3 years respectively. By contrast there's 18 at Schwab, 75 if you also add in Stanford and Caltech grads. If you add in Stanford and Caltech to IB it goes from 3 to 4 (for the avoidance of doubt, it actually goes from 3 to 4 if you add in Caltech). Not saying that you have to go to one of those schools to be good or be a quant or anything else, only bringing them up because MIT was mentioned originally.
You are assuming all care about putting their details on LinkedIn and comparing a firm with 20,000 people with one that has 1500 is hardly a reasonable comparison. Looking at IB's board there is certainly a quant as CIO from MIT. He even seems to have a division in the physics department named after him - LOL.
Like I said, LinkedIn is imperfect but the best we have pending a citation of the original source. As far as size, if we're talking about the architects of "The Algorithm", or even the architects of a company's risk policy, I'm not sure that's a division that scales linearly with company size. I would think it's actually a perfect example of scale economies, you need the same number and type of risk policies if you have 100,000 clients or 100 million.
I was very specifically responding to @Fain's post where he said: I asked what the source of that information was. He declined to provide it. I very specifically responded with Just let me re-emphasize the "Although not the most bulletproof source" disclaimer I made there. I'm genuinely at a loss for why the hostile comment in response to this conversation? As best I can tell someone made a generalized, speculative assumption and I asked for a source or clarification. When that wasn't presented, I provided the best information that I had available that seems to show the opposite, while specifically stating that it was imperfect information. What exactly was wrong with that, to warrant your comment?
It's just crazy that this broker can do what he wants. They have broken some rules of common ethical principles. They have caused the closing of account of many retail trades without any real reason Are they unable to manage risk? The vastity of retail brokers are now returned back to the previous margins, at least for daytrading. Interactive Brokers lacked customers interest I hope they will be punished in a severe way by all these customers that have been betrayed I will promote a legal action against them because they changed financial rules. They have stopped my trading and prevented me to organize my work. I had to suffer a financial damage, searching for a new broker and in meantine stopping trading due to their arbitrary measures
This is the problem. Everyone pays inline. Very few want to pay extra for the best talent. Maybe the best guys get paid 20% more than the average guys in the same position. Even though they perform at least 5 times the average. The only advantage the top performers have is they might be the last to lose their jobs during layoffs. Its also very dis-incentivising. There is no motivation for the best to work much harder than the average. Except their own work ethic and fear of being laid off.